Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been rolling up the streaming charts, which means that more fans are getting to experience the film’s big cliffhanger ending. (SPOILERS) That ending saw Rise of the Beast protagonist, ex-military operative Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), being recruited into the G.I. Joe organization. That set the stage for a long-awaited movie version of the G.I. Joe and Transformers crossover, an event that has been done in comics before (and is currently unfolding now), but never on the big screen.
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Everything We Know About Transformers vs. G.I. Joe (So Far)
After Transformers: Rise of the Beasts revealed that G.I. Joe is part of that universe, longtime franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura made headlines with his mention that the crossover film would happen. However, nothing solid really came about until a year later during CinemaCon (April 2024), where it was officially announced that a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover movie is happening.
“We are going to deliver on the promise we made,” Lorenzo di Bonaventura previously told ComicBook in a previous interview. “We’ve talked about it since the beginning of the franchise because the fans have been like, ‘Come on, when you are going to do Joe?!’ The truth of the matter is there’s so many great Transformers characters that we didn’t feel like we needed to rush and do G.I. Joe. But you also want an organic way, otherwise it feels like a cynical exercise.”
So far, the only confirmed member of the cast and crew is Derek Connolly (Jurassic World trilogy, Kong: Skull Island, and Detective Pikachu). Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Michael Bay, Tom DeSanto & Don Murphy are producing, while Steven Spielberg and Hasbro Entertainment are both on board as executive producers.
As for the cast: no actors have been confirmed yet, but there are some reasonable assumptions we can make. First, it would be extremely odd to continue with this franchise crossover event without Anthony Ramos’ Noah Diaz back in a central role. Rise of the Beasts did the work of laying down foundational brushstrokes of Noah’s military service and prowess as a soldier. Those skills came in handy when Noah jumped into battle alongside the Autobots, but Noah’s identity and skill set as a soldier are something that should be explored in greater detail when G.I. Joe is part of the picture. Other than Ramos, the only other two actors we’d immediately expect to see in a Transformers/G.I. Joe’s crossover film would be Peter Cullen, who is the iconic voice of Optimus Prime, and (oddly enough) Pete Davidson, who voiced Porsche-body Autobot Mirage. Mirage and Noah arguably formed a stronger bond than Bumblebee and Sam Witwicky did in Bay’s Transformers films. Auxiliary characters like Michael Kelly’s (House of Cards, The Penguin) Agent Burke would also be easy to bring back to help firm up the connective threads between the franchises.
The bigger question in all this will be recasting the G.I. Joe characters. The 2000s live-action G.I. Joe films had pretty stacked casts, which included Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Sienna Miller, Bruce Willis, and Ray Park (to name but a few). Even though those films are largely looked down upon by the fandom, they were iconic in their own way. The new G.I. Joe movie franchise will not only have to establish its own take on the franchise, but also have to make that vision fit into a Transformers Universe.
There Are Multiple Transformers Movies In Development (Who’s Directing What?)
There are a couple of directors currently attached to the Transformers movie franchise: Michael Bay will be coming back, and will presumably build upon the continuity of his five live-action films. Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto had his own Transformers film in development since 2021, which would be set in its own continuity; meanwhile, Transformers One animated movie director Josh Cooley is also attached to a live-action film. Rise of the Beasts is expected to get a sequel, which is now looking more likely to be the G.I. Joe crossover. If so, RotB director Steven Caple Jr. could be in consideration for helming the event film.
It’s easy to disqualify Bay from that potential pool of directors, as his live-action movie continuity is distinctly separate from the rebooted continuity of Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts. Soto’s project has hardly moved forward since the announcement, and last year, Hasbro announced that it was pulling out of exclusively funding Transformers movies, like Soto’s project. Caple Jr. and Cooley are much more interesting choices; Caple Jr. has recently proven himself capable, as Rise of the Beasts has been generally well-received by Transformers fans, especially those who adore the G1 cartoons of the 1980s. G.I. Joe cartoons exploded in popularity during that same ’80s era, so if Caple “gets” how to translate that material into live-action, he’s an easy choice to tap for the crossover event film.
Does the Transformers/G.I. Joe Crossover Movie Have A Release Date?
Thanks to the 2023 Hollywood Strikes, the production plans for G.I. Joe and Transformers’ crossover film had to be scrapped. There is no current firm timeline for when the movie will shoot or when it will be released.
Transformers & G.I. Joe Actually Have An Awesome Crossover Happening Right Now
In 2023, Image Comics and Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment imprint launched the “Energon Universe.” Consisting of different series of Transformers and G.I. Joe comic books, which all exist in the same universe, the new imprint has proven to be a big success. It re-imagines the Autobots and Decepticons’ arrival on Earth as a brutal and violent battle to the death, with the giant robots reframed as the terrifying alien beings humanity would view them as. Decepticons brutally murder humans like ants, and the robot-on-robot violence is more brutal than we’ve ever seen it.
Meanwhile, G.I. Joe’s books are reimagined as the action-espionage series you’d expect from a modern take on a franchise centered around an elite covert military unit. Characters like Scarlet, Duke, and Snake Eyes are depicted as being more James Bond or Ethan Hunt super-spies, and their mission are as hard-hitting and bloody as a Jason Bourne film. More interestingly, the lineup of books includes titles for iconic ‘Joe villains’ like Cobra Commander and Destro, who get much deeper character sketches as deranged scientists, arms dealers, and terrorists, each with their own backstory ties to deeper lore from both G.I. Joe and Transformers.
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